The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

An Arc de Triomphe is a Triumphal Arch, a concept dating back to Roman times. This particular arch was built by Napoléon Ier in the style of the Arch of Septimius Severus on the Forum Romanum.
In the same way at that Roman arch, it commemorates an army and, obviously, a triumph, namely that of the Grande Armée in the years prior to its construction which began in 1806.

But what is a carrousel? In this case, the term refers to a type of military dressage. The Place du Carrousel where the arch is located takes its name from the Grand Carrousel, which took place there on June 5-6, 1662, on the orders of Louis XIV to celebrate the birth of his firstborn son Louis (who despite being the Dauphin, did not become king after his father).

The arch was not yet part of a special axis, even though planning and construction of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile began the same year. In fact, it was built right in front of the Tuileries Palace that closed off the Louvre on its western end and became its gate of honor.

Instead of the destroyed Tuileries Palace, you see elements of the axe historique
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Five fun facts about the Louvre

Louvre – east façade

The main entrance
When the Louvre was a royal palace, its main entrance was on the east side, the majestic gate facing the church Saint Germain l’Auxerrois. The triangular bas-relief on the pediment consists of two stone slaps each 17.5 meters long and weighing several tons.

Louvre – east gate

Napoléon transformed into Louis XIV
Napoléon Ier was represented at the center, with one of the Muses writing “Napoleon completed the Louvre”. This didn’t please King Louis XVIII, and the inscription was changed to “Ludovico Magno”, in reference to the Sun King Louis XIV. The crown was removed from Napoléon’s head and replaced with the curly wig of the Sun King. However, Napoléon’s face remained, along with a shield featuring his imperial eagle and his bees.

Napoléon transformed into Louis XIV

From castle to palace
King François Ier (1494-1547) began the transformation of the Château du Louvre to the Palais du Louvre by knocking down the keep. His son and successor Henri II continued his project.

“1541 – François I starts the Louvre”

The Pyramids
The Louvre Pyramid was a subject of controversy when its project was presented. It was at the center of a project improving access to the museum, which couldn’t handle the growing visitor influx.
As confirmed by the Louvre, it consists of 673 panes, not 666 as myths will have it. (Count them if you want.)

The Louvre pyramid


The inverted pyramid is an upside-down version that you can see from the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall.


If you want to see the pyramid, don’t get off the métro at the stop Pyramides, however. This metro station is located on Avenue de l’Opéra [link], and the name is a reference to the Battle of the Pyramids of the French army under Napoléon Ier in 1798. Nothing to do with the Louvre pyramid, inaugurated in 1989.

Free Entry
Did you know children have free entry to the Louvre Museum? In fact, up to the age of 18, entry is free, and if your country of residence belongs to the European Economic Area (EU, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein), it’s even up to 26 years.

The pyramid is also the main entrance to the Louvre museum
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L is for Louis

Many French kings were named Louis, and their combined reigns stretch over hundreds of years of French history.

Louis Ist, born in 778, was the third son of Charlemagne, and became his successor after the death of his two older brothers. His grandson was Louis II, whose son in turn was Louis III, but it was his brother Charles who became the father of Louis IV and great-grandfather of Louis V.

Are you lost yet? Me too.

Louis VI at Saint Denis Basilica (bottom left)

Let’s leave the Carolingian dynasty for the Capetians. After Louis V who died in 987, it took a change of dynasty to get to Louis VI, born in 1084. His son was Louis VII, his great-grandson Louis VIII and with the following generation we finally get to someone interesting: Louis IX, better known as Saint-Louis. We’re in the 13th century now, and Louis is king for over forty years. His reign is seen as the golden age for the kingdom of France which reached economic and political summits during this era. He had a reputation of being very pious and a high moral integrity.
He was canonized in 1297, twenty-seven years after his death, and remains the only French king to receive that distinction from the Catholic church.

Following his death, it took three generations to get to Louis X, the last Louis of the Capetian dynasty. And even after entering the Valois dynasty, it was some time before Louis XI became king in 1423. (He was the son and successor of Charles VII who was crowned with the help of Joan of Arc, with whom you might be more familiar than any of these kings.)

Onward, to cousin Louis XII, who died without giving the kingdom a successor, so the crown went to yet another cousin, François d’Angoulême (the first king named François). Contrary to Louis XII, he had a number of children, yet none of them was named Louis. (His daughter Louise died aged 3 but she couldn’t have become queen anyway.)

Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne at Saint Denis Basilica

Enter the Bourbon dynasty and the reigns of the most famous kings named Louis:

Louis XIII with his prime ministers Cardinal Richelieu and Mazarin, arch-enemies of the Three Musketeers

Louis XIV, the Sun King, who built the glorious palace of Versailles to escape the dangerous streets of Paris

Louis XV who lent his name to the architectural style Louis Quinze and reconciled France and Austria, sealing the alliance with the marriage between his grandson Louis and Marie-Antoinette.
Can you see it coming? That grandson is none other than Louis XVI who lost his head during the French Revolution.
Which makes his brother, Louis XVIII, who returned to the throne after the first fall of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1814, the last king of France by that name (and one of the last kings of France full stop).

Louis XVIII at Saint Denis Basilica

You’ll wonder what happened to Louis XVII and what possessed the parents to name two of their sons Louis, especially as they were born only one year apart?
I can only answer the first question: Louis XVII, or Louis Charles, was the second son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. He was considered Dauphin after the death of his older brother but died aged ten during the French Revolution, 19 years before his uncle claimed back the throne.

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The Institut de France

The Institut de France is a French institution founded in 1795, located in the 6tharrondissement. It assembles the scientific, literary and artistic elites of France so they can work together. It regroups five Académies, the best-known of which is the Académie française.
The Académie française was founded in 1634 by Cardinal Richelieu to normalize the French language and is tasked with publishing an official dictionary of the French language. Its 40 members hold office for life, they are called the “immortals”.

The building also houses the Bibliothèque Mazarine, the oldest public library in France, founded by Cardinal Mazarin under King Louis XIV. It was his private library at first but was opened to the public in 1691.

Location of the Institut de France
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Le Val de Grâce

In 1645, seven-year-old Sun King Louis XIV, and his mother, Anne of Austria, laid the first stone of the Val de Grâce church. The queen mother this fulfilled an oath she had made earlier, to thank God for giving her a son.

Up until the French Revolution, the ^Val de Grâce was the church of the Royal Val de Grâce Abbey. It is located on the grounds of the Val de Grâce hospital. Thanks to the Benedictine nuns providing medical care to injured revolutionaries, the church was spared much of the desecration and vandalism churches such as Notre Dame and Saint Eustace suffered during the French Revolution. Still, it became a military teaching hospital in 1796.

It remained a military hospital until 2016 and treated normal patients as well as the French presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy during their respective mandates.

Today, only the training, research and museum activities remain on site. In 2020, the French president Emmanuel Macron announced it would house three new research institutes, a campus to be completed by 2028.

Location of the Val de Grâce
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The Paris Observatory

The Paris Observatory was founded in 1667 under Sun King Louis XIV and is the oldest observatory in the world still in operation.

It was to be situated on the Paris Meridian (today at 2°20′ East),  which was for a long time in competition with the Greenwich meridian. On Solstice Day 1667, mathematicians traced the lines on the ground where the observatory was to be built. The Paris meridian bisected the site. Today, it is traced on the ground inside the observatory, and the Avenue de l’Observatoire runs along its axis.

The Paris Meridian can also be traced in the city of Paris by the Arago medallions. 135 originally, some of them have disappeared since 1994. They are named after François Arago, director of the Observatory in the 19th century.

The first directors of the Observatory were four generations of Cassinis: Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Jacques Cassini, César François Cassini de Thury and Jean Dominique Comte de Cassini. They held the office until the French Revolution.

The copula of the observatory houses the Arago telescope. Completed in 1854, it was the biggest of its time, and remained in use for over a hundred years. In the 1880, it conducted photometry measurements of Jupiter’s moons (only four were known at the time, though).

Location of the Paris observatory
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Le Dôme des Invalides

The Hôtel des Invalides (remember: not every hôtel is a hotel) is a building complex built on the orders of the Sun King Louis XIV for the invalids of his armies.
Today it is still true to its initial purpose, but in addition to a retirement home for war veterans, it houses the Army Museum, the military models museum Musée des Plans-Reliefs, the Museum of contemporary history, two churches (at the time one was for the soldiers, one for the royal family) as well as the tombs of several French war heroes. And of course, the tomb of Napoléon Bonaparte who died 200 years ago this year in exile.

The Dôme des Invalides can’t be mistaken for another one – it is covered in 12kg of gold that glitters in the sunlight.

Location of the Hôtel des Invalides
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Cupolas of Paris

There are a number of cupolas in the Paris skyline. In this new series, Cupolas of Paris, we will have a look at the most prominent ones and what is hidden below them:

  • The Dôme des Invalides – 7th arrondissement – built under Sun King Louis XIV in the 17th century
  • The Panthéon – 5th arrondissement – built in the 18th century
  • The Sorbonne – 5th arrondissement – built in the 17th century
  • The Observatory – 14th arrondissement – built under Sun King Louis XIV in the 17th century
  • The Val de Grâce – 5th arrondissement – built under Sun King Louis XIV in the 17th century
  • The Institut de France – 6th arrondissement – built under Sun King Louis XIV in the 17th century
1 Invalides – 2 Panthéon – 3 Sorbonne – 4 Observatory – 5 Val de Grâce – 6 Institut de France
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The General Farmers city wall

The Ferme Générale was an outsourced customs, excise and tax collection operation created under King Louis XIV in 1681. It taxed goods coming into the city in the name of the king. Between 1784 and 1791, it built a 5m-high and 25 long wall around the city that was not meant to protect against invaders but to prevent any merchandise to enter the city without paying taxes. However, smugglers used the old quarries running under the wall in what is today the 14th arrondissement.

Two entry points of this tax wall can still be seen today: the lodges of the barrière d’Enfer at Denfert-Rochereau in the south (14th arrondissement), and the barrière du Trône at Place de la Nation (11th/12th arrondissements) to the east.

The Barrière du Trôme at Place de la Nation
The General Farmers Wall (in purple) and the location of the d’Enfer and Trône lodges
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The Charles V Wall

In the 14th century, King Charles V had a new wall built on the right bank but the Philippe Auguste wall was not demolished for all that, since it was considered so solid and wide that a cart could run on top of it.

Charles V was king of France from 1364 to 1380. His reign marks the end of the first part of the Hundred Years War, as he recovered almost all of the lands lost by his predecessors. He was a learned king who founded the first royal library, predecessor to the French National Library (Bibliothèque Nationale de France).

In 1356, Étienne Marcel, Prévôt des Marchands (a position similar to that of a mayor) had a new wall constructed on the right bank, however, he died before the works were completed. Charles V continued the fortification works following his tactics of terre déserte (“better a crushed land than a lost land”) and reinforced the Philippe Auguste wall on the left bank while creating a whole new wall on the right bank that was 5km long and consisted of a combination of ditches and earth-filled ramparts, the last of which was crowned by a small wall. The fortification extended beyond the Louvre Castle to the west, which made the castle lose its protective function. In the east, however, the residence of the king, the Hôtel Saint Pol, was poorly protected and therefore another small bastion was built: the Bastille. It protected against invasions through the Porte Sainte Antoine gate, and in case of an insurrection within Paris, it covered the road leading to the Château de Vincennes, the king’s residence outside of Paris.

The Château de Vincennes

The Charles V wall was destroyed in the 17th century, and there are few remains today. However, it left its imprint on the map of the city, as many boulevards run along the site of the fortification, such as boulevard Saint Denis, boulevard Saint Martin, boulevard du Temple, boulevard des Filles-du-Calvaire, boulevard Beaumarchais and boulevard Bourdon, to name only a few.

The purple line shows the boulevards named above – running along the Charles V wall (see map below).

In 1672, Louis XIV, the Sun King, had a triumphal arch built on the site of one of the former wall’s gates, the Porte Saint Denis. Two years later, he had another triumphal arch built about 250m away, the Porte Saint Martin. The names are misleading since neither of them was ever meant to be a gate, but to glorify Louis XIV and his military victories.

Charles V wall (orange) and Philippe Auguste wall (brown)
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